DFA's Holy Ghost! Collaborate With Michael Frickin' McDonald

New genre: yacht house

The members of the New York nu-disco duo Holy Ghost! must have been watching The 40 Year Old Virgin stoned recently. How else would they come up with the idea to recruit Steely Dan and Doobie Brothers member/eternal punchline Michael McDonald to sing on their forthcoming debut album?

The Daily Swarm points out an interview with Anthem magazine, in which Holy Ghost!'s Nicholas Millhiser tells the story of how this historic collaboration went down. When the resulting song makes beards explode worldwide, we'll have LCD Soundsystem frontman and DFA label boss James Murphy to thank.

Here's what Millhiser told Anthem:

"We had this song, but Alex [Frankel, the other half of Holy Ghost!] wrote the hook out of his range. We always knew we wanted someone else to sing it, but [we didn't know who]. We brought the demo over to James [Murphy], and said, "Why not Michael McDonald?" James-- and he does this a lot-- is really unhelpful sometimes because he [supports] crazy ideas. He was, like, Fuck yeah! Just get Michael McDonald! We happen to know this girl whose father was the bass player in Kenny Loggins' band. So Alex called her and was like, I know this is a long shot, but is there any way you can ask your dad to ask Michael McDonald to do our vocals? She was like, My dad's having dinner with him tomorrowâ€•give me the song and I'll see what I can do.

She gave him the song and he did it...

We wrote out all the charts for him, but he totally did it in, like, five minutes. You can almost hear him eating a sandwich in the background.

He asked us what we wanted him to do, and we were like, You know, do some falsettos, some ad libs, some harmonizing... and he literally did a seven-part harmony. We didn't use it, but...